The discussions about Diana's new novel had ended. Out of the Ashes, already a bestseller. Diana smiled to the first man from the queue for autographs, a young lady. Write that it's for Irina. You know, I burnt my right arm too when I was young and now I write with my left one, like you. Is that where the idea of the novel came up? Yes, that's that. You smell like roasted pig, Diana, as he was whispering her in the ear. That's the only way I can crave you. He was holding her hand on the grill of the stove and she was not allowed to say a word.
Luchian Abel
When I was a kid I fell with my face on a grill, I didn't pay attention, I was chasing a butterfly or he was chasing me, my cheek got stuck on the grill, shaped like two squares. All my childhood children played X and O on my cheek, that was the only way I could have friends, until one day when a wonderful girl won a game putting her lipstick gloss instead of the decisive X. Her name is Xenia, I am Ovidiu, an X and a O, from which an R, an A and a tiny I got out and they all chase butterflies next to the covered grill.
Cristina Daniela Dumitru-Pascal
She painted arms rising to the sky. The story behind the paintings was unknown. Also that the paintings helped her get to the story. The black uniforms tortured her father. She was next. She was 14 and she held her eyes to the ground. The ground in which 30 jew children were hidden. They put her palms close to the grill. Finger after finger. Slowly. Pressed. She was imagining how she would play the piano. When the cheek met the red iron, she looked at her father and she smiled to him. It smelled like burnt skin and horror. It was smelling like colours and arms rising to the sky.
(Translated by Ema-Teodora Rădulescu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)
Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale.